Believe S.A. (BLV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Believe Half Year 2023 earnings presentation. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Denis Ladegaillerie, Founder and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Welcome, everyone, to this H1 2023 webcast. Xavier Dumont, our Chief Financial Officer and Strategy Officer, and I will be presenting through this webcast. If you can move directly to Slide 4. Our mission as a company is to develop artists at each stage of their career in the digital world, in all local markets. And the way we accomplish our mission is and the way we differentiate is by leveraging people and technology to build the best products and services for artists and labels. In H1, in furtherance of that mission, our focus has been on 3 key topics: one, we had an exceptionally high level of new opportunities to capture commercial opportunities either through new business or renewals that I will describe. But our second focus, as in the previous quarter, has been on improving our efficiency and our profitability as we've done consistently since the IPO. Our third focus to continue to invest and differentiate in AI, in experimentations and building the principles so that we can differentiate further and further improve our attractivity to artists and labels. Starting with the first highlight. H1 has really been one period of very strong commercial activities at 2 levels, and we will get into details into each of these levels. We had a very strong level of new signings, especially with established artists and also large labels. What we've seen is this is a factor of two things. This is a factor of essentially in more and more markets, digital markets, digital segments of the market are becoming more and more important and Believe having built over time a track record of breaking working with top partners in each market is creating opportunities for us that were not existing before and that we've been able to leverage in H1 in commercial terms. The second set of opportunities that we had in H1 2023 is the opportunity to renew a set of very large contract with existing artists and labels with a view to significantly improve both the economic terms as well as the length of these contracts and something that is being built on the back of very strong trust relationship established with existing clients, seeking to deepen or expand existing relationship over a longer period of time or over larger set of services. And that has led us, Xavier will cover this further, into expanding, allocating more capital and advances to these unique opportunities, which by experience, we've seen as both highly valuable and high-return opportunities. So as a result, we've seen a solid organic growth in H1 2023. That has been slightly slowed in Q2 2023, mostly related to the significant euro appreciation that we've seen, affecting our digital revenues from non-Eurozone. As you know, a large part of our focus has been in investing in emerging markets, especially Asia being our #1 market for investments and having a large revenue base in U.S. dollars. The euro appreciation translated into revenues for us, has had a negative impact on Q2 2023 revenues. We still see, as other players in the market moderate ad-funded monetization. We've seen a slight recovery in some of the markets, not in all markets. Our third focus, and Xavier will expand around this, has been really around increasing profitability. And as you've seen, we've been able to expand profitability, EBITDA margin by 250 basis points at two levels, improving segment margin profitability. So this is the profitability of our various commercial segments as well as the operating leverage driven by the scale effect, the ratio of central platform cost to top line is further continuing to contribute to EBITDA margin. Moving on to Slide 5. The commercial opportunities that we've seen in H1 2023 and think we can move directly to Slide 6 at 2 levels. First level where we have seen very significant opportunities is within the established artist market. There's a couple of examples on this slide. Believe was, if I take France for the first half of the year, the biggest hip hop label in the market in terms of market share, 22 albums in the top 200. Hip hop is the largest market segment by far, 27% market share locally, including 3 of the most -- 5 most streamed albums. This is one market where we are more advanced, but it does demonstrate the ability over time to build on a track record of success with a mix of breaking new artists as well as working with established top artists where we have long-standing relationships. Also illustrated by Grammy received by some of our artists here, Gur Sidhu, Lucky Ali in India as examples and the fact that Believe received the award for best label and artist services company in the U.K., which is really targeted at -- aimed at rewarding companies providing the highest quality of service in the U.K. at the Music Awards a few months ago. So our focus, generally, what we're seeing is more market segments becoming more digital. Our track record of working with established top artist is driving stronger attractivity to new artists coming to us directly, and that is translated into some of the allocation of capital that we've been making. The second opportunity is we've seen and a few more examples, moving on to Slide 7, around that reflects the diversity in terms of music genres as well as territories. As you know, our focus is on signing and developing local artists, we are seeing, all of the data showing us that the market share of local artists is increasing on all digital music services on Spotify, but as well as on YouTube and other services. And we are continuing to invest on, firstly, on developing local artists in their markets across a wide range of genres of music. Second opportunity that we've seen in H1 is the opportunity to renew and sign a number of large Tier 1 labels. That is being driven. That opportunity is being driven by the fact that very consistently for the past several years, our labels have grown at a much faster rate than the market, thanks to the set of services, thanks to the expertise of our local teams and the way we're organized to serve them. For the first half of 2023, the average performance of our labels has been 44% higher than what we've seen in the market. And that is only the portfolio of existing labels on a comparison basis. The ability for us to externalize this performance is, as you can imagine, high, and that has led a number of artists and a number of labels to come back to us asking us to strike much longer relationship to expand the set of services that we're providing them at a higher level of operating margins. And as a management team, we made the choice to move forward and capture these opportunities as we do think by experience and all the data showed us and Xavier will touch around this that the ROI of this relationship in the long term is extremely high, and that has driven us to allocate more cash to advances to capture high-level opportunities and high return opportunities. From a geographic standpoint, moving on to Slide 9 as an illustration, we've continued focusing around Asia, where in the first half of the year, we have celebrated our 10-year anniversary in Southeast Asia, where we have been able to establish from no presence 10 years ago to a leadership position that is already at scale with a leadership position in most local markets in terms of both artists and label distribution, where we are continuing to invest significantly on all aspects of our business, premium services as well as developing automated solutions there. We expect these markets to grow very significantly. And although despite the currency headwinds that we mentioned earlier, we expect these markets to grow 4.5x by 2030 in the region. And the region remains one of the key investment themes for us for the future. Lastly, before Xavier moved on to our efforts around improving profitability and efficiency. We've -- our focus on -- we've had a very high focus in H1 2023 around innovating and building our engagement principles around artificial intelligence. We do think that artificial intelligence is going to have a major impact in 3 dimensions. The first one is creativity. We do think that generative AI and what we're seeing in the market will empower every artist to make high-quality music. So we think that for a large part of our business for our Automated Solutions, technology will rapidly be available to elevate the quality of the music that is being produced, allowing younger artists, developing artists to compete faster in the mid-level market segments and towards the top with higher quality music and accelerate their learning curve to become -- to improve their craft. So that's one focus of ours, how do we leverage AI, generative AI technology to build products and services for artists that are making the benefit of helping them elevate their craft. The second element where we think AI is going to make a very significant difference is one where we've been investing for several years now is Discovery. A large part of new artists discovery today is being done by algorithm-based recommendation across music services, and we've been for several years now building machine learning models to be able to optimize the marketing and promotion of our artists of their trucks on various digital music services to help them expand market share and do services. That's been a continued effort in H1. That is going to be a continued effort for the next 2 to 3 years in differentiating in that category. The first thing -- the third thing is efficiency as part of the effort that we're driving. We do think that AI has the potential to help us as an end-to-end technology in music digital business, we do think that the potential for AI leverage generative AI or AI to improve our business from dealmaking to marketing campaigns to efficiency in our supply chain is extremely high, and we're engaging on all of these topics internally. In parallel to this, as other players, we do think it is our responsibility to approach AI with a very responsible approach, and we spent a large part of the first half of the year, building our engagement rules around 4 principles of consent, control, compensation and transparency by which we are approaching every single AI opportunity that is being submitted to us by our digital music partners around the world or smaller companies coming to us to experiment. So these have been really the themes of our growth. And I'll now let Xavier develop around how that's translated and also how we have our effort of improving profitability in H1 2023.

Thank you, Denis, and hello, everybody, and nice to have this conversation tonight. So moving to Slide 12 about the key elements of our financial performance. As presented by this, we have another solid operational and financial performance in H1 with market share gains in Q1 at the same level than in Q2. The organic growth reached 17.5% in H1, and we're growing in all regions despite a weaker Q2. We have 18% digital revenue growth with a strong and resilient paid streaming monetization single digital ad-funded monetization on average, but much weaker in emerging countries and in mature countries. And we have very strong headwinds in currencies embedded in our DSPs revenues, especially in Q2, and we will see that just in detail afterwards. The digital revenue represents 91% of our revenue, slightly decreasing versus last year. The 9% of non-digital sales include notably publishing with the acquisition of Sentric in Q2, physical that you know we are curbing specifically in Germany, merchandising and live. As announced in our past communications, we actively manage our investment cycles with a focus on efficiency and returns. We reached 5.8% adjusted EBITDA margin, up 250 basis points versus H1 '22, driven by a better amortization of the central platform investments and by improving margins at segment level despite lower revenue growth. We signed significant attractive opportunities to sign or renew deals with labels and top artists at much better conditions like duration or margins, leading to a higher level of advances and thus, negative free cash flow for H1 at minus EUR 32.9 million. Let's now have a look at our growth by quarter on Slide 13. So as we said before, the quarterly trajectory in terms of organic growth show a deceleration of growth in Q2. We grew organically by 12.9%. The main factor that contributed to the performance of that quarter is the currency headwind embedded in royalties paid out by our digital partner. As you know, DSPs like Spotify or YouTube receive money from the subscription or the advertising in local currencies, which constitute most of their revenue. Our contracts with them provide that we receive a share of those revenues. And even if a vast majority of our DSP contracts are in euros, we're still impacted by the variance of the DSPs local currency translation embedded in their statements. As flagged last year, this effect was positive in 2022. But as Euro appreciation is much stronger versus almost all currencies, Q2 impact has been more significant with minus 6.5% and even more than that in June. Adjusted for embedded currency impact, our organic digital growth was 23.6% in Q1 and 20.5% in Q2. Our premium solutions market share gain is the same in the 2 quarters. So Q2 performance also reflects the weight of our various geographies as emerging markets which have higher growth rate are suffering the most from weaker ad-funded monetization. Let's now have a look at our performance by segment on Slide 14. On Premium Solutions, we have has shown strong growth despite currency headwinds with a very strong commercial dynamics, reflecting the appeal of our model based on digital innovation and differentiating positioning. Our market share growth has been stable each quarter, but we are still impacted by the weak ad-supported monetization despite easier comps in June, as you may remember, there was a first drop in ad-supported monetization in June last year. We have not seen much recovery in the last few weeks, specifically in emerging markets. As you can see, our organic growth is the same as our total growth in Premium Solutions as we have a positive effect from the integration of Sentric in Q2 that is offset by negative effect on the Turkish lira depreciation versus euro. On Automated Solutions, we have a single-digit organic growth in line with our expectations. TuneCore social platform's revenue share offering is also impacted by the weak ad-supported monetization and the unlimited new pricing has lower ARPU not yet compensated by the strong ramp-up of new clients. If we have a look now on Slide 15 on our geographies. We gained market shares in more geographies. The geographical footprint and growth pattern of the group illustrate our model. As you know, we are focusing on digital music. We're positioned in the countries where digital penetration is lower, and thus, the future growth is higher. This is illustrated by the strong growth in APAC Africa, as mentioned by Denis a few minutes ago on the 10-year anniversary of our presence in Southeast Asia, for example. So that area grew by 23.6%. In all countries, including mature developing ones, our addressable markets are enlarging as more and more traditional genres of music become digital, leading to more opportunities, both in the recording and now in the publishing market. This is demonstrated in growth in France with 12% and more generally, Europe, excluding France and Germany at 23.6%. I just want to flag that Sentric is shown in that region, i.e. Europe, excluding France and Germany. Germany has seen -- experiencing slower growth, reflecting a less dynamic market and our continuing efforts to reduce our exposure to physical heavy contracts. Thanks to a multitiered approach, we served all digital artists from music creators in automated to the top artists in premium in a profitable way, as shown in the growth of the America regions of 21.7%. If we now go to the next slide, that would be 16, sorry. on investments. Our digital focus that is based on a mix of technology solutions and music allow for differentiated positioning, digital innovation that translates into higher appeal to artists and labels and steady operating leverage. As you know, we are constantly deploying new teams to address new music genres on new business lines or new types of artists or labels. We have a very strong operational control as our blueprint is very well defined. Each team is made up of 4 or 5 individuals, and each team takes circa 2 years to reach breakeven. We have a very strong control and execution and as demonstrated, when our revenue numbers do reach the planned levels, then we reduce our investment accordingly until we reach the expected profitability as we expect amortization level to be lower. We decreased our investment levels, and we continue to work on efficiency, leading to higher segment EBITDA margin as we will see later. If we go to next page on Page 17, the central platform. So as you know, central platform is one of the key drivers for building differentiation and innovation as the central platform provides the technology and the solutions, not only in tools but also processors, structuring management that power the business lines in the countries. The central platform teams are split between the tech and product teams that design, develop and operate the tech tools. The G&A team, the finance, legal, HR, for example, that provides the framework to manage our business and resources and the sales and marketing teams that design the commercial offers and organization and provide management tools that are then leveraged at local level. So that's why central platform costs are not driven by volume, but they are more a function of the number of products we deploy, innovation, the number of business lines we are managing, the number of countries we operate in or the number of businesses we acquire. As the group expanded massively in 2019 and 2020, finalizing its multi-tier approach with the launch of artists services in 15 countries or the split of artist solutions from Label Solutions, the central platform increased significantly as a percentage of revenue in those years. The central platform is still expanding in euro terms as we want to continue investing in new solutions such as AI data marketing or just development, and we want to continue to be at the forefront of innovation. However, the central platform is decreasing as a percentage of revenue, as illustrated, we went from 12.4% in H1 '22 to 10.9% in H1 '23 and will still be decreasing in financial year '23. The main factors that drive the central platform costs in H1 '23 has been further efficiency projects, specifically in IT and finance as well as investments in sales and marketing around data, AI and audience development. So that translates on Page 18 on a very strong EBITDA margin improvement. The group EBITDA margin trajectory is a function of the segment EBITDA margin, i.e., the margin of central platform cost because lowering investments reflect lower growth by almost 100 basis points and still work on our efficiencies. This margin grew by 140 bps despite weaker revenue. The central platform cost is a driver of our EBITDA margin trajectory, and that is decreasing as a percentage of revenue. And this is the one that normally contributes the most of the expansion of the group EBITDA profitability. By a careful management of our cost investment level, we've been able to drive operating leverage, which explains why we are reaching our midterm objective level, 2 years ahead of the plan despite lower growth in revenue in the first half of the year. If we go now to the Slide 19 on the free cash flow. So the free cash flow reflects the very strong commercial activity we had during this semester. As we have a negative free cash flow in H1, but mainly because of the working capital variance that reflects the further investments we made in advances. As flagged by Denis and also mentioned during our past communications, the advanced projection depends on the contract conditions with the labels and artist. Because of our positioning and quality of service and maybe also because of the current environment, we've been able to extract more value from key partners, mostly labels and artists, with higher margins and higher contract durations. Advances have a very high ROI 31%, much more than most of other type of cash allocation, including M&A. So we signed those unique opportunities in the last few weeks. You may remember that we had the same phenomenon in H1 '21. But this year, the opportunities have been much more numerous and even more profitable. We're talking about a limited number of deals and we have. We gave in the press release some color on what those signings, where there are mostly labels, which provide, of course, a higher level of confidence. Capital costs are stable and the CapEx increase that you can see are mainly linked to M&A. And so most of it is adjusted for in the line acquisition-related amounts. If we now go to Page 21 regarding the guidance. So we took into consideration the strong currency headwinds to -- and we are because of that revising our guidance down on revenue growth. But because of our good operating leverage, we are increasing our EBITDA margin. So we are now expecting an organic revenue growth of around 14%, including a 9% negative FX embedded in the digital market. Without that effect, organic growth will be around 19.5%, reflecting resilient paid streaming, weak ad-funded growth as it has been since the beginning of the year and continuous market share gains. We are anticipating a higher EBITDA margin of around 5.5% as central costs will be decreasing as a percentage of revenue. We are demonstrating quarter-after-quarter, how powerful our model is to drive growth get market share and increased profitability. So we will maintain a focus on investments in local sales team and in central platform [indiscernible] solutions. But at the same time, we will continue to manage actively our investment cycle to further improve profitability. The group operating leverage will continue to come mostly from the central platform cost as in the past. As we want to continue leveraging the higher return on advances and the commercial -- unique commercial opportunities we have, we now anticipate a negative free cash flow for the full year, nevertheless, showing improvement versus H1 '23. From a cash allocation standpoint and given the high return we have on advances, we plan to reduce our M&A target for '23. Our target was EUR 100 million of M&A for this year. We have already spent EUR 48 million in H1, mainly Sentric and we will manage actively our acquisition pipeline to get the best returns between advances, M&A and other investments in local and central OpEx. We confirm on Page 22 that we are on track to deliver on our midterm objectives, an organic revenue growth of 22% to 25% for the period '21 to '25 and adjusted EBITDA margin from 5% to 7% by 2025. And this operating leverage will be based mostly on the better amortization of the central platform cost. As you can see, we are above the lower bracket in '23, thanks to higher revenue and control platform investments. The long-term EBITDA margin for the group of 15% after hyper-growth phase is also unchanged. Now I'll let Denis to conclude the presentation.

Thank you very much, Xavier. As a conclusion, what I would say is what are we aiming to do for H2 2023 is very much along the lines of what I indicated in the introduction, which is we expect commercial opportunities that we have seen in H1 2023 to continue coming our way with opportunities on long-term renewal, higher value, higher ROI renewals to continue in H2 2023, which is why we've made the decision on allocating capital to these opportunities rather than M&A, as Xavier was saying. Number two, we expect we will continue through automation and leveraging technology, AI, non-AI to continue improving the profitability and efficiency of the central platform. while continuing to invest in technology to be able to differentiate in helping our creators become more creators through product and technology and people and help them reach audiences as we've done in a very targeted and very efficient way. That is going to be our priorities for H2 2023, very aligned with our mission to become the best at developing artists at each stage of their career in the digital world. Thank you very much. We're moving on to the questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Nicolas Cote-Colisson of HSBC.

Two questions, please. The first one is on FX. I wonder which currencies would you say was the most impacting in Q2? Because I get the Turkish Lira that you mentioned on the slides, but I mean the U.S. dollar did not really change much in the last few months. Hence, it shouldn't be a big surprise compared to when we last spoke in April. So I just want to check on what other currencies are hitting your organic growth -- organic growth, sorry. My second question is on advances. I'd like to understand a bit better how it works there because I get your point that it's helping long-term growth and returns. But what's the difference right now? Because it feels like everything happened in the last couple of months when I would have assumed that these things takes time to mature before signing these kind of deals. So I guess I'd like to understand the process here and how all of a sudden there is such a step-up in opportunities leading for more spending in advances.

On FX, the effect is really on Q2. And when you look at each and every currency euro appreciated versus each and every currency. And you look at dollar, dollar is part of the equation, but you look at the euro versus dollar, in the last few weeks, and you will see that euro appreciated a lot. But all currencies are impacted. That would be, of course, not only dollar, but that will be the Indian rupee that would be, of course, Turkish lira, that will be some -- and most of the emerging countries' currency. So I'm struggling actually to see one currency under which the euro hasn't gained. And so that's why we have this impact. And as you said, this impact was quite recent. I mean it's really Q2 and it's even worse actually in June. And the projections we made on the currency, the minus 9% is a basis of what the banks are telling us about the projections and the fact that -- and you may have heard what others said in the market that there is going to -- there is going to be a stronger currency impact going forward than there have been in Q2. The second thing are advances, it's -- the way it works that the negotiation started -- usually starts in, I would say, end of Q1, beginning of Q2. And then you get a few weeks of negotiation before striking the deal. I don't know if you remember, but I often say that, the way it works is that a label will come and see you and say I want a big event to which you are going to tell, yes, if you want a big event, and you need to sign for a longer period. And usually, there is a balance between the duration of the contract and the [label] of events. The new thing there is that several of those conversations that started the same way ended with the label or the artist accepting much, much larger duration in contracts and also higher gross margin for us, which was, I think, a factor of, I suppose, the economic environment that makes bit -- less easy for them to finance. And so they accept better conditions. The fact that also our positioning and quality of service is very strong. And so they are willing to engage on a longer period because they are more confident about the fact that Believe will deliver a very good service on the long term for them. And that's what led to the fact that in the last few -- last quarters specifically, we had those opportunities that are quite unique.

To add -- maybe to add, Nicolas, to what Xavier was saying is I think it's -- do we think this is really a structural element that's going to come back? No. I think -- we think that this is more opportunities. And as you might remember, we had the same thing a couple of years ago where we had 1 quarter where we renewed a few big deals and that had an impact. What we expect there really, as Xavier was saying, is we've been really good. I mean, you have been on all of our calls. So what you've seen on a lot of our calls is we have grown our portfolio of labels anywhere between 15% to 44% faster than the market. So -- and that's been consistent for the past almost 2 years. And so we are getting to the point where we have been really good at externalizing that value and why Believe is positioned as high value-added provider to them by helping them develop their revenues faster than anyone else. And I think that's the work that we've been doing for that positioning for the past couple of years that's now paying out, and that's now putting us in a position that's giving us now a window to strengthen and expand this relationship. We think that's what is driving on top of the global economic context, these conversations.

No, look, it makes a lot of sense. And I get your point, it's not structural, but more opportunistic. I get that. And maybe just a follow-up, a very short one. Did you think that your ROIC on M&A could have been higher than 31% previously. You're ready to reinvest in [advances] because of the high returns. So I'm just wondering when you do your capital allocation whether...

I would say on average, no, it's lower than that. However, yes, we had returns on some acquisitions that were much higher than that. So our point was to say, okay, we want to be, I would say, responsible and what is the most efficient capital allocation from, I would say, not only a return but payback also because payback is important how and at what ties you organically to get the cash back as you know, payback on advances is much, much shorter than on M&A. So that's also what drove our decision there. But as Denis said, it's more, I would say, opportunistic and short term than really long term.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Tom Singlehurst of Citi.

Yes. Thanks so much. In fairness, I think we've sort of sort of anticipated, say at this moment where that currency impact would unwind. But I suppose now that it is unwinding, how can we -- maybe you can just say a few words on just how we can be sure that there isn't a sort of market share loss embedded in that. We know that the big sort of major incumbents or discussions with some of the streaming platforms around sort of reducing prominence for long-tail content. Are we 100% sure that there isn't any sort of fundamental drag on your sort of share performance within that 2Q figures. So that was the first question. And then secondly, I mean, leaving aside the currency impact, just from a market perspective, I know UMG said they saw a slight improvement in sort of advertising funded streaming, but there was no sort of clear sort of pathway to a better performance in the second half, absent an easier comp. I was just wondering whether you could give some insights on the outlook for sort of directly or indirectly ad-funded streaming at a market level.

Maybe I'll take the first one and Xavier can complete. On the market share data, we have basically from -- all of the biggest DSPs are providing us market share data either on a monthly basis or on a quarterly basis. So that is something that we're monitoring -- that we're monitoring permanently, and that's how we're calculating our market share across the territory. So what we're seeing is -- so we measure actually -- we look at -- we have a very precise way of knowing exactly whether it's on YouTube, on Spotify, how much market share we've grown in what territories and globally and what we've seen as Xavier was saying is all of the data is showing us that we're continuing to gain market share. Some of the questions around value sharing so far have really been around when we see all of the discussions so far are very -- at early stages around. And I think they're really focusing around what everyone is aiming at doing, which is curbing abusive streaming and streaming fraud. And I think everyone is very aligned. And you might have seen the alliance that we announced and that we spearheaded with a few of our players to help with that. So market share is -- so market share is continuing in short, and we don't expect market share gains to move in the short term, which is what our projections right now is to see in H2 very similar market share gains as what we've seen in H1. So Xavier, you want to complete and answer the second one?

Yes. Well, I think also you can probably triangulate with the results that have been published by Universal Music Group and Spotify also that would give you a high level view of our growth versus them and that we've shown you the fact that we are growing faster than they do. Even if it's, of course, just a proxy because our calculations and market share are much more precise that as Denis said, we have detailed reporting by the DSPs on market share, et cetera. On the second part, I think on ad-funded monetization, as you know, we've been always cautious. I would say because the [indiscernible] is super high. So when we go into details, it is true that, for example, you see the Spotify results, Spotify ad supported is better. However, when you see other actors like local actors or even in YouTube, for example, you see that the ad-supported monetization is not really getting much stronger. And we also saw what we said also last time, which is there are differences per country. They are -- in -- as we just said, mature countries are faring slightly better than emerging countries. And so taking into consideration all these facts plus the fact that we haven't -- we were supposed to have an improvement in June because the comp was easier and we didn't see that improvement. That's the reason why our assumptions that we took was that there will not be improvement in the ad-supported monetization going forward, except for the ones that I quoted. Of course, we don't have a crystal ball. And of course, there may be -- we may be wrong. But it's the assumption that since the, I would say, the most reasonable with the information we have today.

The last question is from Julien Onillon of Stifel.

I just wanted to come back on your EBITDA margins. It's improving strongly in the first half that you expect some decline if you take your guidance somewhere because it's like 5.5% compared to 5.8% in the first half for the full year. My question is beyond the eventual releases, eventually decline you might have in the second half. Any impact from the currency in terms of cost reduction, you have an impact of 9% expected of currency in the second half on the revenue side, do you have some reduction anticipated due to currency [indiscernible] of 9%? That's my first question. My second question will come back to the small details on your financials. I was looking at your detailed financials and you have the associate earnings, I would say, which were positive last year becoming negative this year? And the second question was also a slight decline in your, let's say, associate minority -- sorry, on the minority income, which will mean that there is 1 division, which is probably going down in terms of earnings. Could you explain a bit more on what is declining slightly on this revenue or say, profitability from one of your subsidiary probably which is going down slightly.